In FY2012, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) had an appropriation of $106.79 million available for expenditure. U.S. taxpayers fund the CRS, a “think tank” that provides reports and briefs to members of Congress on a variety of topics. However,there is no easily accessible depository for all these reports and U.S. citizens who want them have to request the reports from their member of congress.

On its annual report for FY2012, CRS indicated that it prepared 534 new reports, and 2,702 report updates. Some CRS reports are available through the Federation of American Scientists, the University of North Texas, and Open CRS. Also check out CRS on Open Congress; it includes links on the discussion of direct public access of these CRS reports. The reports made publicly available through the State Department are available below. We will routinely republish them here. Note that some documents are web-accessible but most are in pdf formats.

The State Department’s Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations has just released a ‘Year in Review 2013-2014’ video, primarily highlighting the new embassies built under its “design excellence”initiative. You will note that some of the projects in this video have been completed while others like the New London Embassy, and those buildings in artist’s renderings are still undergoing construction or in the early phases of the projects and won’t be completed for a few more years.

We understand that the bureau is still working on providing Congress with the documents requested during the latest congressional hearing. Congress won’t be back in session until September 8, and then, it will only conduct business for a couple of weeks before it runs out again. Nonetheless, we are hearing that there may be personnel shuffles at the bureau in the offing. We’ll update when we know more.